The discount you're about to run

It's a slow week. Tuesday and Wednesday are half empty. And the thought is already forming: run a quick promo, fill the chairs, fix the week.

Sit with that thought for a second before you act on it.

A salon owner I work with was doing exactly this, running Groupon deals every time the calendar looked thin. It worked, sort of. The chairs filled. But when we looked at the numbers, two things showed up. Almost none of the Groupon clients ever came back at full price. And some of her best regulars, the ones who would have paid full price anyway, were buying the discounted packages too. She was paying to fill seats with people who left, and handing a discount to the people who were already loyal.

So we dropped Groupon and sent a plain email to her existing clients instead. No discount. Just a note that she had a few openings that week. It brought people back in at full price.

Here is why that worked. A discount to fill a slow Tuesday trains your best clients to wait for the next sale, pulls forward bookings you would have gotten anyway, and quietly erases the margin you spent the last two issues learning to see. Two issues ago I wrote about the price you're afraid to charge. A 20% off promo sitting on an 8 to 15 percent profit margin is not a discount. It is most of your profit, gone.

A slow week is rarely a price problem. It is usually an "I never asked them to come back" problem. The fix is often a rebooking text or one honest email, not a sale.

The discount is the easy answer. You already know it is the wrong one.

If you're not sure which of your promos bring people back and which just fill seats, reply to this email and I'll help you read it.

Anne-Cécile

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